Recruitment should be about more than filling a role.

MNS Finance was founded by Maxim Rem and Stijn Schilder, but their partnership started long before the company did.

Friends before they became colleagues, they entered recruitment early in their careers and learned the profession alongside each other. Maxim initially became Stijn's buddy, helping him find his feet in a profession they were, in truth, both still learning themselves.

That dynamic did not last long.

As they developed as consultants, mentoring turned into competition. Both became high-performing recruiters and, over the years that followed, regularly found themselves competing alongside each other at the top of the scoreboard.

That competition became an important part of their development. They compared approaches, challenged each other's thinking and raised the standard for one another. When one performed, the other had a benchmark sitting close by. And behind the competition was a constant exchange of ideas: countless conversations about what worked, what did not, and how recruitment could be done better.

The friendship created the initial trust. Years of seeing each other perform gave that trust a commercial foundation.

What started as an idea between two ambitious friends gradually gained something more important: evidence.

From competing to building

The ambition to build something together existed early. The experience required to do it properly came later.

As their individual track records grew, so did their understanding of what running a recruitment business actually required. Eventually, Maxim and Stijn had the opportunity to build and operate a recruitment business together within an existing organisation.

It took them beyond running successful desks of their own. Together, they built a market, developed client relationships, made broader commercial decisions and became responsible for more than their individual performance.

In the process, they learned something equally important: working well together did not depend on approaching things in the same way.

Their differences made the partnership stronger.

Today, MNS is the next step. It brings together the track records they built individually, the experience they gained building together and the ideas they developed over years of working side by side. This time, with the freedom to build the company around their own standards.

Those standards are deliberately demanding.

Strong commercial performance matters. So do integrity, transparency and the quality of the relationship behind the transaction. Maxim and Stijn believe that doing something valuable for someone should not always depend on an immediate return. A short-term opportunity should not come at the expense of a long-term relationship.